A lighter one this time. Today we went hunting for African wild bananas. Really.

They are not common but I had spotted some distinctive plants in a nearby valley and wanted a closer look. As with so many Bwindi stories this one started with a steep descent. The easiest path followed the park boundary. The in-park side is mainly regrowth after an area of plantations was cleared some years ago. The area outside the park has been planted with pine seedlings and, lower down, a small area of tea.

We had heard and occasionally seen the crowned cranes that visit the small swamp at the valley bottom. These elegant birds were hooting today. We saw them as we reached the swamp, and they saw us. They watched us with their characteristic poise and confidence.

Despite months without significant rain, the mud in the swamp remains soft. We tried to cross. After my first trial steps I struggled to withdraw as I gently began to sink. The dark ooze that rapidly filled my foot prints released a noxious egg smell (sulphide). Luckily I still had my boots.

We edged around the swamp and then moved into the forest following a trail that soon petered out in a cluster of bee hives. We pushed on climbing now. Much of the forest here is thick scrubby vegetation. We had underestimated how thick the vegetation was. We had to struggle to find a good vantage point to spot our quarry. Our clothes, and even our hair, were soon covered in the spiny and hooked fruits of plants that viewed us as a passing opportunity to disperse their seeds.

Finally, we had a good view. The large leaves of the banana plants are unusual in these forests and stand out clearly even at a distance. I counted more than 90 plants growing near the valley bottom.

So I have bananas on my brain day. I was thinking that for some of you bananas are a very familiar link that leads to the rain forests. Let me tell you some more about that. Bananas are amazing.

What surprises many who first encounter wild bananas (whether in Africa or elsewhere) is that the fruit contain large numbers of hard dark typically pea-sized seeds. Generally speaking, all wild bananas need seeds to disperse to clearings in the forest and thus persist from generation to generation in a changing environment of trees and gaps. Occasional seedless mutants must occur from time-to-time but such plants will not survive long unaided.

African bananas occur in mountain forests. They have been domesticated in the highlands of southern Ethiopia where they are a major component of the diet. The wild plants now have a relatively restricted distribution making them of some conservation interest. As they feed many people in often drought ravaged parts of Ethiopia they may prove to be a crop with wider value in the future (they taste good too).

Unlike the exposed stacked “hands” of fruit seen in the Asian bananas (as in your local shops), the African plant sheaths its flowers and fruits in a succession of lampshade like structures that makes a large heavy flower and fruit filled tassel. Take a look at the picture.

The African plant is an Ensete to distinguish it from the Musa to which other edible bananas belong (other Ensete species also occur in Asia [and Madagascar]). There are no true wild banana species in the Americas (where their closest relatives include the broad leaved Heliconias commonly seen as ornamentals). Most wild banana species (mostly Musa and a few Ensete) today occur in South East Asia, especially in the many islands of Indonesia, New Guinea, and the Philippines and also in Malaysia. These Asian wild plants are dependent on animals such as bats and tree-shrews for pollination. I am unsure what the African banana requires, though I would suspect bats or sunbirds (maybe someone can tell me please?).

The bananas we eat lack seeds. These eating bananas were likely domesticated in New Guinea, where bananas have been cultivated for at least 7000 years. These varieties have been utterly dependent on humans for their vegetative propagation and survival ever since they lost the ability to produce seeds. They are clones, though mutations for sweeter forms etc. must have arisen and been selected form time-to-time. These seedless forms somehow made it to Africa. Archaeological evidence suggests the cultivation of (Asian or New Guinea) bananas from a few centuries BC in Cameroon and just possibly (the evidence is suggestive but not conclusive) from five thousand years ago in Uganda.

Claims of cultivated bananas in South America before Columbus are debated. Such vast ocean crossings are not wholly implausible. We know that the Polynesians carried bananas to some Pacific islands. Banana plant sprouts can survive in storage for several months, enough time to cross an ocean. We know too that sweet potatoes, originally from the Caribbean, travelled the other way across the Pacific and were well established in the New Guinea highlands long before the arrival of the astonished Europeans.

Today we found our wild banana plants in the forest. Those in your fruit bowl are direct vegetative descendants of plants once also found in the rain forest and transferred from human hands to human hands since long before the dawn of history. What rain forest riches shall we leave for future generations?

Interesting or boring? Perhaps we should we avoid plants in a wildlife blog …? Let me know.